The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology is publishing a report on a study that is claiming that ultrasound treatments can help in preventing acute injury to the kidneys due to major surgeries. The study was conducted by Mark Okusa M.D. and his team. They used mice to test a kind of ultrasound treatment that they now think might be also effective in preventing possible negative effects that a major surgery may cause to the liver, heart and lung: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130801233032.htm.

Acute injury to the kidney after major surgery is becoming more prevalent and has been becoming more and more serious, researchers noted. An acute injury to the kidney means that the kidneys of a patient are not functioning well and that the malfunctioning may pose a serious threat to the life of the patient.

The report will appear in the upcoming issue of the said journal. Findings from the study are suggestive that an ultrasound treatment done before surgery may prevent the development of serious injury to the kidney associated with invasive medical procedures.

This is often due to the kidneys being deprived of blood or the minimal supply of blood to the kidneys that occur during major surgeries. According to Bingham Memorial’s Louis Kraml, the problem after the surgery is there are very few options available for patients to counteract the possibility of developing serious injuries in their kidneys. Most of the time, what patients have are just supportive care interventions applied after surgery.

The researcher used mice in their experiment. They treated mice with an ultrasound-based treatment without the use of any medicine twenty-four hours before blood flow disruption to the kidney. The mice did not show any problems with their kidneys when normal blood flow was restored. Yet, the research team said that their findings should be tested by further research.

Implication of the Study

Everybody knows how important the functions of kidneys to the body. This study has open doors to the possibility of protecting these important organs when treatments become detrimental to the said organs.

A dedicated server is a computer that is dedicated to only hosting your website. Standard, shared hosting has a server storing and running the websites of several people and companies. This makes the sites run at slower speeds (the server resources are shared among the hosted sites) and exposes them to increased security risks. If one of the sites is hacked, the entire server (including your website) could be compromised.

With dedicated servers, your website will get all the CPU, memory, hard disk space, etc that come with the server for its own usage. You can choose the server operating system, the type of database that works best for your online business, as well as the applications that will make it easier for you to properly run and manage the website.

Of course, if you have several websites, you can host them all on a single server. This way you will practically have your own shared hosting server, but its performance and its control is totally in your hands.

Having a dedicated server will also mean that you can easily upgrade it. If your website makes heavy use of multimedia content (video, audio, etc) and you run out of space, it is very easy to add another hard disk to your server. With standard website hosting, it would be much harder to get a space upgrade, not to mention that you would also need a significant bandwidth increase.

Do I need a dedicated server? The answer can’t be a straight “yes” or “no”; everything depends on the type of the website that you are running. If your site has grown a lot and the existing hosting account can’t cope with the traffic increase, then you definitely need to use a dedicated server. If you have started to make financial transactions using your website and you need extra layers of security, a dedicated server is certainly needed.

On the other hand, if you have a small website that doesn’t get a lot of visitors (think less than tens of thousands of people per month) and / or you don’t accept payments on your site, switching to a dedicated server can be postponed for now.

Should you manage your own server or let a specialized company do it for you? Some companies will even host your server – the name of the service is colocation – while others will only manage it remotely, installing software patches, dealing with software related emergencies, etc, rather than actually storing your server in their facilities.

Finding the proper dedicated server is not an easy task. There are lots of options on the market today and with lots of options you may get confused. Sure, there are several dedicated forums that host reviews, but to get a good overall, unbiased review you need to check several forums, for example. You don’t want to end up buying a server that has glowing reviews on a particular website because the server maker was actually sponsoring that forum or website.

Another good idea is to take a look at the reviews that list the pros and cons of the server. If you see a review from a person that claims to have used the server for many months (maybe even several years) and lists its negative points as well, that review might be full of good info. And if the same cons are repeated over and over on various sites, you will know for sure that the server has problems and should be avoided.

1. A very common and very useful measurement once you enter the doctor’s office is the blood pressure. The doctors have recently discovered that if the measurement is done close to the heart, the value measured during sleep is higher than what was thought until now.

Doctors have now come to the conclusion that measuring blood pressure during sleep is very important in order to predict stroke and heart disease. Up until now, the doctors knew that the blood pressure measured at the arm, during night, was at smaller values. Now the doctors have realized that all drugs prescribed for lowering the blood pressure can have unknown yet effects when it comes to the value of the blood pressure close to the heart.

2. Scientists at the University of Kentucky have created a new mechanism that is capable of healing the inner ear. The mechanism helps the structures in the inner ear to rebuild themselves once they have been damaged by the loud noises that are responsible for the loss of hearing. The estimated number of people that suffer from inner ear problems reaches 360 million persons.

3. Hand washing is the most efficient way of preventing the development of serious disease. Nevertheless, a new study has shown that only five percent of the people know how to wash their hands in a correct manner. The result is an astonishing one, as scientists believed the percentage was much higher before the results of the study were published.

When we wash the hands in a correct way, half of the food-borne diseases are eliminated. Hands should be washed with soap and water for at least 15 seconds; instead, people wash their hands only for an average six seconds.

4. Sometimes people take their life considering that this is the only way they can end their problems. A group of scientists from the University of Sweden has managed to list the main suicide risk factors.

One of the results of the study has demonstrated that men are three time more prone to suicide when compared to women. People that are young, single and have a low level of education commit suicide in larger numbers.

When it comes to women, unemployment is a major risk factor. The study has also revealed that before committing the suicide, both men and women, in a percentage that is close to 30%, went to see a doctor. This means that a lot of them had contact with a medical representative prior to their death.

5. Several African plants may contain a substance that can be effective against multi drug resistant cancers, say the results of a recent study that has been conducted at the Johannes Gutenberg University.

The substance is capable of killing many of the tumor cells which are resistant to drugs. This means that new therapeutical approaches may develop in the near future, bringing new hope for sick patients.

Multi drug resistance is one of the major fears specialists have when dealing with a cancer diagnosed patient; it means that the chances for survival are seriously diminished. The good news is that major efforts are made in order to find new treatments for the sick people.

1. Scientists wanted to know just how big the smallest of the galaxies in the world is. And they have found out that the smallest galaxy is indeed very small.

Its name is Segue 2, nicknamed The Dwarf Galaxy, because it contains only 1,000 stars. This may mean a lot for some, but it is good to remember that the Milky Way galaxy contains from 100 to 400 billion starts.

Specialists have even declared that the finding of such a small galaxy is like finding an elephant smaller than a mouse. The scientists have had some difficulties concluding it is indeed a galaxy, but since all the criteria are verified now, they were convinced they have found the smallest galaxy indeed.

2. Several countries in Europe are dedicated to recycling; among them, the country with the fastest recycling rate is the U.K. In fact, analysis says that between 2000 and 2010, the U.K. has had the fastest rate of recycling in the entire world.

If in 2001, only 12% of the U.K. waste was recycled, in 2011, the percentage raised to 39% – a very important change. On average, the rest of the European countries managed to raise the percentage only by 13%, from 27% in 2001 to 40% in 2011. Among the countries that make serious efforts, and thus are indeed interested in increasing their recycling rate, there are Germany, Belgium and Austria.

3. A new medical machine will definitely change the life of many TB potential patients in Mozambique. The machine will be used for rapid diagnose of TB: patients will simply spit into a cup, and their spit will be rapidly analyzed. This way a lot of time is saved, and consequently many lives can be saved. The results are given to the potential patients only in a couple of hours and if they turn out to be positive, the treatment can be started right away.

4. People that choose to walk 15 minutes after each meal are thus able to prevent developing diabetes type 2. Due to these walks, the blood sugar is kept under control. This is the conclusion of a study conducted by specialists at George Washington University. When the blood sugar level is raised, this could lead to diabetes, so if people choose to rest after they eat, it could be dangerous to their health.

5. A test that can point out the Down syndrome could be performed to very early pregnancy stages, meaning between week 11 and 13. Due to an ultrasound technique, a certain portion in the back of the baby’s head is measured, and based on that the doctors can evaluate if the baby has got the disease or not.

Of course, when there appears to be a risk of Down syndrome, further tests are conducted, so that the persons involved receive complete, trustworthy information.

6. When it comes to kids under five years old, about half of the number of deaths per year in the entire world is caused by malnutrition. This means that about 3 million kids, aged under five, die because they do not receive proper food. The first 1,000 days in the life of a kid, from conception till the age of two, are crucial for the further development of the child. This is why it is so important that kids receive the proper food, containing the proper nutrients.